fun for free: Grey Lynn Toddler Pool

If you are lucky enough to live in Grey Lynn you will no doubt be reading this with a takeaway coffee and Anika Moa's Songs for Bubbas playing in the background and you will know all about the great stuff for kiddos in your local park. If you are anywhere else in Auckland and you don't have a pool get on down to the free pool in Grey Lynn Park. It is supervised, shaded, next to a cool playground and safe for under 5's. We love it so. We have been twice this summer, the first time was before our beach holiday in January, Ada just dangled her feet in from the edge of the pool. The second trip we had the pool to ourselves, it was a cooler morning, Ada was all about it! I put Olive in too, she was sitting in a big ring we have, she seemed pissed off that the couldn't splash her hands, well it was that or the cold. Olive had a short swim...

Ada a year ago! What? Hi Grace!

You enter the Grey Lynn Park from the Williamson Ave entrance or down Grosvenor St, thwn you are right next to a great play ground, a skate ramp, basketball court and the paddling pool. Fenced. Patrolled. Shaded. Amazing! It should be open a few more weeks, here is the councils website with the guff.

Google Map!

fun for free: Auckland Botanic Gardens

I thought to round off the summer I would do a short series of posts of places to go with your toddler in Auckland. You may or may not know there are a number of fun places to go with your family for free! I do so love a good freebie. There are hopefully a few good weeks of weather left and getting outside is a great plan. Winter is coming.

oops, not for touching...

We visited the Auckland Botanic Gardens the beginning of summer and loved wandering about the various regions of the world represented in plant life. There is a sculpture walk over summer ponds with birds and fish and of course many plants to keep your inquisitive toddler entertained. We will hopefully go again soon as teh sculpture walk is great and only there until February 28th. This time we will probably go as early as possible to avoid the heat of the day and now Olive can crawl about a bit rather than suffer the squirms in the front pack as she fights sleep! (I love when they are finally awake long enough to go somewhere and get home again without a melt down. Ada loves wide open spaces she was in heaven here.

The gardens are in Manurewa, take the Hill Road exit when coming from the city, from there you can follow the signs. Easy! For a refuel/adult moment there is also a nice wee cafe at the entrance that serves a lovely Italian espresso.

Where do you take your small children in Auckland?  Look out for my next installment of free fun.

You may also like to know some kid friendly cafes.

they don't call them terrible twos for nothing

"Hi mummy, hi!"

Hmm what to say, what to say. Ada is doing exactly what a two year old is supposed to do. Each day is filled with so many examples of her doing these three things:

1. Expressing her opinion

2. Mastering the art of doing things for herself

3. Finding the boundaries

When she does them in a positive way it is crazy adorable ("I love it", referring to BBQ chicken or a pink ice block. "My do it myself!"). When she does these things in a negative way it can really wear away at my patience and my general good cheer. Then it can make me mad! Angry! Cross! So unbelieveably frustrated! We are using some time out for when Ada's behaviour is unacceptable. This is almost exclusively when she purposely pushes or throws things at Olive. She shows no remorse! In fact Ada barely shows any motive for these actions, she just blank face does them. After a minute of time out we have a chat about it, then Ada apologises then looks like she will do it again pretty much immediately and so I make sure they are playing in different areas. Not easy with miss mobile 7 months.

Who else uses time out to discipline their children? Any tips? 

7 months!

Little miss Olive turned 7 months last week. Life has been a whirlwind lately, what with going on holiday up north and starting back into our term time activities at Playcentre and beyond.

Olive is her own little whirl wind. Two teeth, speed crawling and a few let go's to stand on her own two feet. She is a bunch of fun. Ada reminds us what we say by copying Olive and mimicking us. "Look two girls! My crawling! My standing up!" We have races crawling down the hallway and they both beam at me. I love it!

first tooth

The drool has slowed a little! Here is the first tooth cracked through Olive's sore gums. Can you see it? Watch out apples Olive is on her way. 

It was a pretty quiet arrival thankfully. I feel for those bubba's and mama's who have teeth come in with torment. 

Olive loves a wee gum massage to relive the pain. What remedies do you know or swear by?

Obaby that's a fun app!

Hello!

Obaby is a new discovery of mine at the App Store and allows cuteness overtop your cute pics. Double cute!

It's 80% off, so I bought it. Usually I go for the freebies but I'm having a lot of fun with this. $1.29 worth of fun at least. 

There are sections for all sorts of baby related moments, pregnancy, birth, the first year and so on.

Do you have any app recommendations? 

lunch time!

Olive seems to prefer savory dinner ish food over sweeter breakfast ish food and so I made her the baby spinach dhal Ada used to like. I searched here on my own blog for 'dhal' rather than redo the conversions for the original recipe. Reason #15 for blogging?

Success! She loved it too! I have puréed this and put it into ice cube trays to use later. Olive is still munching fruit pieces and toast, she has tried beans, broccoli and corn thins lately too. The other night at dinner I got the happies cos we were all eating corn at the same time. Small things... Olives food always ends up in her hair, marmite was no exception. When she was not eating dinner one night Cam put pumpkin on a nectarine slice, she opened her mouth wide each time and ate it. Olive thought it was awesome at first but then you could see her thinking, everything I eat tastes like pumpkin, what gives?!

What have you had success with when you have fed your babies? Any great sites out there? I am going to go back through The Wednesday Chef: Cooking for Hugo series and see what I can find.